


The Wittenberg Primer

by archea2



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Drabble Collection, Fluff, Humor, Light BDSM, M/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-07
Updated: 2017-08-22
Packaged: 2018-12-12 09:42:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11734434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/archea2/pseuds/archea2
Summary: Hamlet and Horatio study (hum hum), play the two-backed beast, and cling to each other's heart of heart.(Basically, your adult-friendlyHamletmeetsBelles of St Trinian's.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First written as a series of fills for a certain anon meme. Dedicated to the nonnies who cheered the Wittenboys on (or "those two devil's spawns", as they were called at one point).
> 
> Because I did not initially plan a series, the background timeline - King Hamlet's death and Gertrude's remarriage, Horatio's visits to Elsinore - may vary a bit between one snippet and the other. Ah well. The Bard wasn't exactly flawless in that respect.
> 
> Some snippets are sheer fluff, some a bit kinky. Be warned that the next chapters will include "I for Impact Play" (light switching), "R for Ruff" (light collar play) and "N for Nipples" (light nipple play). Nothing very hardcore, but.

**A is for Aging**

[ ](http://imgur.com/cbnoKZP)

 

A school year is a gaol. A shelter. Nay, make it a sun, that doth move round tradition’s clock, each repetitive hour (chapel, class, meals, class, chapel) ticked by dusk and evensong, while a larger clock rings in Michaelmas, Yule, Mayday or Midsummer. Sometimes, watching Hamlet light up at dusk (and bedtime), Horatio wonders. Does Hamlet look forward to the cycle’s end, when the clocks will stumble, the stars will freeze, and they’ll be let out to live each day after the next, unknowing of what may come?

It thrills and numbs Horatio in turn, not to know how they will age. If they will grow apart or grow old together, a prince and his – what? Who is he to be, five years or ten from now, when time is out of joint? Horatio stares down at his empty dinner plate (current stopover: Good Friday) and sees a blank slate.

"Cheerily, man." Encouragement, whispered at his ear. "There will be cake and ale for us later."

And dates, quinces, and beer-pickled onions and Danish herring, which always seems to make its way inside Hamlet’s tuck-box, no matter how landlocked their Saxon college is. But Horatio is not to be sustained with raisin cakes. Not when he is still chasing that elusive ghost, his later self, in the white-glazed maiolica.

Five years, ten years. Will Hamlet marry? Princes do, in the grand scheme of things. But Denmark’s first name has changed as of this year, and his Queen is lusty enough to bear first and skew the dynastic rule. Say that Hamlet is let off the heir-baited hook. Say that – Hamlet willing – he is sent off to Poland, or France, or the whole wide world waiting outside, will he keep Horatio? And if he claims himself a stay-at-home, will Horatio be let in? O god. Will he be a _courtier_? 

"…Man?" The whisper again, swelled to an anxious hum. "Friend? Art thou here, fellow student?" 

But wait. Worst scenario ahoy. Hamlet – thirty now – receding hairline – alone, a nihilist – King Claudius’s kleptocracy too much for him – plastered to the hairline, out of ennui and obligatory local customs – leaning over Elsinore’s battlements, for a breath of – duelling the wrong – midnight nature walk by flood waters – choking on a –

A hollow, flehsly sound, the boom of a tabletop being soundly whacked. (Hamlet is not known for his patience.) 

"O _Heaven_! Earth calls on thee!"

Nothing choked about that pissed-off groan. Horatio starts; looks into Hamlet’s face, his now-self, alive with nervous energy and carnal appetites. Looks, and is answered. A fig on five years! He’ll be damned before they have his prince choke on a pearl smoothie. 

"E’en here, my lord. With you." For ever and a day, ay, come rain or come his prince's shining grin. "Bring on those cakes and ale."

 

**B is for Burning**

 

Horatio’s eyes are nothing like the sun. Which is well, very well, excellent well in Hamet’s book, one that comes with a limited quota on sun puns. Horatio’s eyes have the browns and greens of his native Lombardy. Himthinks. It is hard to say, really, when Horatio will lay them on any and all particular of their new school life, except Hamlet.  
  
A groan-worthy pass, indeed.  
  
Horatio kindly offers to escort him to the college apothecary after Hamlet has grasped his wrist and raised a sigh during Rhetoric. Hamlet accepts only so he can take a good, piteous peep at Horatio’s eyes.  
  
"Green -," Horatio whispers, jolting Hamlet’s hopes. Alack, he carries on. "– plums. Most violent on the bowels, i’faith. Here, my lord, lean on me. Have tried a clyster yet?"  
  
The 'green sickness' it is, a-preying on his heart. And so Hamlet spends his next restless nights looking up cures in Wittenberg’s justly famed library. But the Ancients cannot seem to agree on one. There’s the leaping-from-a-rock cure, which is impractical, and the marriage cure, which, nay. Flogging is right out. Unless –   
  
"Wilt thou whip me?" he asks Horatio, screwing his courage to the sticking-place. It’s supper time, meaning there are sixty other lads talking and munching on asparagus (Wittenberg also prides itself on its menus), and Horatio has to yell his "Ay, nice weather today!" across the ruckus.  
  
A very sad Hamlet crosses out whipping.  
  
He spends Homewriting Hour penning a letter to his lady mother. She will, he knows, mingle her tears with his. She will extend her compassion across the miles and months of absence. She will  _not_  ask Uncle C. for advice.  
  
"Your uncle quoth, a sup of Pinot noir and a wench will do the trick. A has betted two sapphires and a basted turkey on the odds that little Ophelia, dost remember her, quite a big girl now…"   
  
So much for parental guidance.  
  
In the end, he waits until Disputatio, when he is paired off with Horatio to ponder the sixty-four-thaler question, _If 5.000 were fed and there were 12 baskets of leftovers, how many apostles did it take to hand out the breads and fish?_ Horatio rolls his green, not-sun, beautified eyes, and Hamlet shakes his arm a little.  
  
"If all’s ill about a man’s heart and a will not leave the man at peace," - no time to catch his too-hot breath - "but pants after a good purpose, what should he do?’"  
  
Horatio looks down at his arm, then up and earnest into Hamlet’s avid eyes. Pat enough, thinks Hamlet.  
  
"Obey it," Horatio says softly, and - just like that - procrastinating is yesterday’s rule.

 

**C is for Cat**

 

[ ](http://imgur.com/ZKow8lD)

**Ambrose Benson, _Portrait of a Woman with a Cat_ (1592)**

 

Once upon a long-lost time, when Horatio was a rich man’s son, his father had his young wife sit for her portrait. The year was 1556; the sitter was two months with child; and the painter was Ambrose Benson, who had a reputation for turning the household upside down until he spotted the house cat and dumped it on his sitter’s knees.  _Le chat, c’est chic_ : Messer B. held to his motto, and had most of his silk-and-lace Madonnas clutch a sleeker, furrier version of the Infant Jesus.   
  
The cat was gone, and so was the sitter, but her portrait had lived through the great estate sale, courtesy of Horatio’s guardian and his devotion to Donna Bice. Horatio had gone to sleep with his cheek turned to the wall where she hung and an upward glance at her left hand, which held the cat’s paw tenderly between her second and third fingers.   
  
It was that playful, faithful little gesture, a far cry from her bland face and disciplined hairdo, that made him love the absent woman. Just as now, years and yards away, the sight of Hamlet in their study with the college cat swells his heart with warmth.  
  
The cat, a sturdy grey mouser, ignores Horatio.   
  
So does Hamlet, his head bent forward, his posture deadly still. Oh dear. A staring contest. This will go well, thinks Horatio, crossing into the room to sit at his desk.  
  
"The cat  _will_  mew," Hamlet says with righteous ire, letting Horatio see the light. Pox! It’s Thursday. Thursday is Natural Philosophy day. Natural Philosophy means a two hours’ migraine listening to Hamlet hash out animals, minerals and veggies, due to the Rector’s craze for selling out Wittenberg as ye up-to-date, open-windowed, none-of-this-Roman-hogwash school. Where the lunch asparagus are first anatomized in class before they can join the kitchen.   
  
" ‘Tis God’s decree that thou shouldst continue to exist and enhance thyself by mewing. But yet thou won’t. Come! A cat may mew at a prince." The cat, a five-pound riposte of silent inertia, stares on. "I’ll hear you out yet, sirrah. Or thinkst thy paws and whiskers be an ontological argument?"  
  
"You will lose this wager, my lord." Horatio bends sideways to pet a furry cheek.   
  
"Not so, not I. ‘Twould be a cat-astrophe if I did."  
  
People who do not know Hamlet very well peg him as a perpetual scowler. I'truth, as Horatio reminds himself when the dark and crazy, and rotten, and did he mention crazy, cloud up his view of Denmark, Hamlet has a wicked sense of humour. His passport for a continuous and enhanced existence, these last seventeen years.   
  
Hamlet smiles, eyes gleaming like dark sweet cherries with the punster’s mirth, and touches the back of Horatio’s hand with two long fingers.  
  
Which is when the cat mews. Loudly.  
  
Horatio’s ontological argument was learnt at sixteen, roving in his father's fields-that-were with this or that village lad. The stuff of rhetoric, it is not. But as he winks down at the cat, now sprawled across their four legs and a nonstop vocalizer, Horatio finds their minds attuned. Live here; love now; call for these witty hands, these ticklers and strokers, so they seal you for themselves - and never, ever, leave.

 

**D is for (Diddle Diddle) Dildo**

"Whether it be that in man, God’s counterfeit, we see a noble piece of angel hoisted by God’s own petard as the Holy Fathers instruct us, or closest at some point to a beast that wants discourse of reason, viz. Uncle Claud, that is the question – to the dialectic parsing of which I need thy help and experimental good will, ay, truly, if thou willt a lender be of thine own tailbone."  
  
And that, my lords and ladies, is a sample of Hamlet being logical.  
  
"Nay," says Horatio, making  _his_  point clear.  
  
"Not even to please poor Hamlet?" Who has of late played the third-person card by way of coaxing Horatio to his whims. "A will be most grateful."  
  
"A will kindly remember that I sneeze in the presence of sables."  
  
"Pah, man." And Hamlet dangles the dark furry tail enticingly, holding the  _diletto_  to which it has been glued between thumb and finger. " ’Tis fox. Plucked off by mine hand from the Rector’s best tippet."  
  
Whoever made Hamlet president of the Disputatio Club should be treated according to his own deserts. Preferably with a flogger. Horatio, glaring at the tail, racks his brains for a counter-thesis. There’s a reason why the Rector wears a fur stole – why every member of the Renaissance élite, male and female, does – and it has to do with attracting the F-L-E-A-S off one's body. But Hamlet’s eyes are alive with a brightness that rarely visits him these days. And thus Horatio sighs, and crooks a stoic’s finger.   
  
"I will see it first, my lord, if I may."  
  
The dildo is a plug of leather, ready-oiled. The tail, a thick, lustrous sweep of reddish-brown hair, is uncommonly clean. It smells of camomile. The Rector may be Luther’s man and close his eyes to all that glitters, but he knows how to treat a fur stole right. Oh, what the hell. Horatio rolls over and pushes his head down into his arms.   
  
"Tail me, then, sweet Prince."  
  
"Art thou…" but Horatio turns up one cheek to show Hamlet his smile, and the rest is – touch, Hamlet’s fingers tarrying between his nether cheeks and over the secret passage which is his only. Horatio whispers his urgings, until Hamlet’s fingers grow bold and svelte, playing the toy, and leather assumes its right of use over Horatio’s pliant flesh.   
  
"Hum," says Hamlet weakly, flooding Horatio’s heart with triumph.   
  
He raises himself on his hands and knees for a coy shake of his rump. Hamlet’s answer is choked and decidedly un-rhetorical. Horatio grins. Stands up on the bed and poises himself with his weight resting on one leg, bent at the knee, so that his left cheek can jut out cheekily and set the tail in motion.  
  
" _Ha,_ " says Hamlet, kneeling behind him. Horatio can feel how he exposes his turned-up face to the fur, each caress a new sensation to record and cherish. Soft you now, Horatio thinks.   
  
"O most angelic and unmatch’d fox" – the words enveloped in Hamlet’s hot breath, that gives as soft as he gets, and who wants discourse of reason anyway? Not Horatio. Not when there are kisses along the tail and he senses each of them, up to the very last; lasting; disputing rights with the stiff leather, while Hamlet’s palm woos its fleshly counterpart to a hard, fast, as-of-yet-unmatch’d orgasm.  
  
Later, the dildo duly cleaned and perfumed, they lie down again in each other’s arms.  
  
"Thy passion’s slave," Horatio murmurs. Pauses, then adds, "To the bone, my Lord."  
  
But Hamlet is asleep, half-angel, half-snuffler, and wit can wait till the morning.

 

**E is for Enigma**

 

Every school needs a mystery. The Prefect of Studies would agree: he is the one who tells the new boys about the spectral bonfire in the recess yard, come solstice day, and the ghost of John Frederick the Magnanimous leaping over it with his mantle flying behind. (The Prefect, wise man that he is, knows that by mid-July the story will be sunk in the summer hol’s upcoming glee.)  
  
But when the Faustus kid is sent an anonymous parchment accusing him of clinching a deal with the Black One, that’s another tale. The Faustus kid’s an odd fish and a bit of a prodigy, but  _come on_. And then there’s a detailed account of Cook committing the unspeakable with the farm cows. Or goats. The Prefect didn’t check before he ripped it off the refectory door. Within the next month, half the student élite are pilloried by the Croaking Raven for an array of sins that would have the Spanish Inquisition keel over in a dead faint. Next thing you know, the  _Rector_  is getting one about… some thing or other (the Prefect, wisely, forebears to ask). There’s a heat wave of speculation. The school apothecary bursts into tears during Chapel. And then, on a bright May morning, when the lark’s on the wing and all’s right with the world, a student throws his goat’s milk in Prince Hamlet’s direction and, right in synch with the slur, brands him as the Raven.   
  
This, for the Prefect, is the proverbial straw. Not because Hamlet is royalty, but because this sort of thing here, where sixty boys toss and turn on the choppy seas of almost-there adulthood, can only bring disaster. If Hamlet’s inky cloak is enough to foster suspicion, God knows what their tongues will stop at.  
  
"I want that Raven’s name," he tells Our Man in Sixth Form, aka Horatio, "and I want it anon. E’en this week. And let this be your sole revenge."  
  
(Birds, meet stone. The Prefect does not entirely trust Horatio, that paragon of self-control, not to exact blood for milk. You never know with these BFF types.)   
  
Of course, there is no hiding the brief from Hamlet. Who has already taken arms against the slings and arrows of calumny by launching a solo investigation – despite Ros and Guil's clumsy attempt to become his Thompsons.  
  
"They," Hamlet tells Horatio indignantly, "would pluck at the heart of  _my_  mystery."  
  
They split the job. Horatio, still a non-suspect, quizzes the Sixth Form. Hamlet dons his inky cloak and breaks curfew to spy on diverse and sundry doors. To no avail. When Friday wheels on, the poison quill’s still at it.

Worse: he is targeting Horatio.  
  
"Words, words, words," says Horatio, while Hamlet splutters in vicarious ire. Rendez-vousing Barnardo on the rooftops, forsooth. "My prince knows better than to take them literally."  
  
Of a sudden, Hamlet turns off the splutter. "What say you?"  
  
Horatio, always the paragon, repeats his words.  
  
" _Ha_!" says Hamlet, and grabs the parchment happily. "Marry, an anagram! Dost see? CROAKING RAVEN. A CANKER ROVING. Ay, that he is. A RANKING COVER. The Rector, mayhaps? Or, wait! RAVAGER NICK ON. We need to talk about Faustus. CAVERN RAG OINK…"  
  
Horatio settles himself more comfortably on the bed, between Hamlet’s legs, his head on Hamlet’s lap. It’s going to be a long Friday night.

**F is for Feet**

 

We met (I know not why, nor care to find)  
In dreams, afore the day we came to part  
With childhood each, both unfathered. My mind,  
Foil-like, did whip past every heart  
Trusting none: a song of suspicion.  
Thus I to Wittenberg, fifteen years fresh,  
Sans friend, sans faith, sans goal, sans mission,  
A thorn in mine own too solid flesh,  
Came forth. Swift, swift, Horatio: the coach  
Bore Hamlet to the yard where boys  
Of all varieties, none without reproach,  
Play'd the trumpeting cock: grown in noise,  
Lackbeards all. One, in that mad country,  
Stood aside and read. Ay: read, as I live,  
A book. O brave new lad! A book, marry!  
A book of words! The hue of resolution  
Hot in my face, a plea that he forgive  
The trespasser, I to him: "Friend...".

E’en then I knew my dream companion,  
And, you a-smiling, parsed:  _godsend_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Thanks for the lovely comments! In case the commenters feel like prompting, I have a free slot for the letters P, T, W and Y.:))

**G is for Getting Caught**

They get caught on Palm Sunday, 9 a.m. In Hamlet’s bed. It is strictly Hamlet’s fault for waxing poetic and miscasting the lark, their make-do alarm clock, as a nightingale. And then distracting Horatio with a BJ.  
  
On the silver-lining front, they’re past the  _fellatio_ and well into the  _lubricatio_  stage when the Rector's man barges in to see what, in Melanchthon’s name, is keeping Prince Hamlet from Chapel. The hurry is easily explained - or would be, if Hamlet could be persuaded to open his letters rather than mostly everyone else’s on the (mostly wrong) assumption that they’re all King Claudius’s narks. As things are, Hamlet has missed on the fact that Olive Branch Sunday is doubling as visiting day for his uncle-father and aunt-mother.  
  
(Marry, how topical.)  
  
Things get rather hectic. Rector and royals are dragged away from Chapel at the earliest opportunity. Hamlet is grounded; Horatio is dragged to the Prefect of Studies’ study, where delinquents are rumoured to kneel on a rod of steel for _hours_ on, starving, while the man enjoys a conspicuous snack of ortolans. 

In reality, the Prefect is a humanist. He motions his prize pupil to a chair and, in the following hour, breaks the silence once and mildly to say, "Perfumed oils – capital for back rubbing, I’m told. Biblical precedent, all that".

Horatio looks up gratefully: he knows a loophole when he hears one.  
  
Then waits his time, literal and figurative, while King and Rector select their own gambit. When called before the latter, Horatio is not surprised to hear himself indicted as a truant in disposition, the canker to Hamlet’s rose, a bloody, bawdy villain, remorseless, treacherous, lecherous, kindless, &c. &c. The Queen stops to blow her nose, the King’s cue to pinch her cheek and say "There, there. Boys a-being boys, Mouse".  
  
Horatio’s attempt to mention backrubs goes unheard.  
  
"Mine Hamlet would  _never_  –"  
  
"By no means." The Rector seizes Horatio up in one toe-to-cap glance. Bursary student. Of noble but come-down-lately stock. No family to speak of. Guardian, one, elderly, stuck in the breech pocket of Lombardy. No loss to the school. "Be you assured, dear Madam, the fault lies entirely with –"  
  
Which is when the study door slams open, and Hamlet, scant of breath, hurtles in. "Me," he says. "If it were done, then, when it is done, ’twere well ’twere done to me. Whatever you have in mind."  
  
" _My lord_." (Horatio’s stern warning).  
  
The Rector lifts a pacifying hand. Theirs, he says, is an enlightened age. A sinner, by any other name, will do as well in another boarding-school with more, ah, flexible mores. I’truth, England has quite a reputation for…  
  
"Then I must to England go. If you send him i’th’other place, I will not rest nor remain silent until his name be cleared, or mine sullied along. Bring me to the test, sir! And see what befalls you." Hamlet pivots to face his next-of-kin. The Right Honorable Martin was not fiercer when nailing his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg church door, and Hamlet looks ready to out-Luther him by arguing his way to a round hundred. "What say Your Majesty? Will you send me to England?"  
  
There’s a meditative glint in the King’s eye. Horatio likes it not a whit.  
  
"You will not stir a foot away!"  
  
"Then, good Mother, shall Horatio stay." A flushed Hamlet flings his head back and his arms out, taking the coffered ceiling for witness. "O, my father’s ear would have been open to justice!’  
  
The new king’s lips part, only to close again. The silence is thick enough, Horatio thinks, that it could be sliced and sold a penny a-piece on market days.  
  
"Luke 10: 25-37," he says loudly. Then, having ensured a live studio audience, proceeds to stake his Good Samaritan loophole.  
  
The morning runs on; as do the royal mates, in due pomp and circumstances. Horatio stays out of sight, but ambushes Hamlet on the latter’s return to the main stairway.  
  
"Nay, sweet Prince. There will be no running your blade through the Rector’s breast."  
  
Hamlet glares and mutters about old fools sending young, pure, beautified boys over pirate-infested seas, but ends up handing his practice foil.  
  
‘ _And_  the rue, my Prince.’  
  
Rue, while not a deadly herb, is liable to cause gastric pain, puking, hives, and persistent bouts of flatulence. All true facts, conveyed to Horatio from the horse’s mouth – a horse now looking a bit sheepish.  
  
"A would 'a'done you harm for my sake."  
  
"Then let me have the rue for a keepsake. And your heart is your better sword." Horatio lays his hand gently over Hamlet’s breast, that warm, cherished stronghold. "Now to supper. And then…" (A wicked, Boccaccian grin.) "…to make the nightingale sing, my Lord, full loud and as many times as please you."

**H is for Hogwarts**

[ ](http://imgur.com/DF2mR6o)

  

 _Third time's the charm – just as before. In the Mirror, his father and mother gaze back at him, entwined, the King's face as warm and vibrant as the open fire behind them. And Yorick is back, too, sharing four sweet apples between his hands. It's Christmas: the fireplace mantle decked with holly, green like the eyes of…_  
  
_"So - back again, Hamlet?"_  
  
_Hamlet feels as if his insides have turned to Norse ice._  
  
_"I - I didn't see you, sir."_  
  
_The old man only shakes his head. His next words raise an echo, as if reflected from another, cloudier plane in Hamlet's consciousness. Desperate desires of the heart, Dumbledore says, and Men have been driven mad before. Wise words. But..._  
  
_"Sir - Professor Dumbledore. Can I ask you a question?"_  
  
_"Of course, Hamlet."_  
  
_"Who is this?" Hamlet says, pointing at the green-eyed boy. The boy in the mirror is smiling, his Hufflepuff scarf unwrapped from his neck as he holds it out, an open offer of warmth. "I've never seen him here."_  
  
_"It does not do to dwell on dreams,'"says Dumbledore, his voice implacable, and Hamlet flinches alert_ \- to the pinch. Mild, but yet enough to jerk his face upright again. On the platform, the Lord Polonius tilts his head and strokes his long beard, once, before launching back into prize-giving rhetoric. Hamlet stares back.  
  
"Were you in a dream, perchance?"  
  
"Ay," Hamlet says, but there's the rub – his lover’s thumb, soothing the pinch. "It set me up a glass."  
  
Horatio's laugh ruffles the corner of his mouth. "And what might you see in it?"  
  
"All of magic," says Hamlet, truthfully. A beat; a memory, truth’s last stand against chimaeras. "And the inmost part of you."

 

**I is for Impact Play**

 

It takes a whole week for Horatio to curb his reluctance. June on its last legs; Hamlet due back to Court any time for the summer hol, where there'll be bathing romps, _petit lever_ protocols, drinking games, because King Claudius can't enjoy a nice Merlot without spicing it with some weird forfeit or other. Now is  _not_  the time for Hamlet to yank his tights down and demand that Horatio spank him to a scalding red.  
  
Hamlet, of course, thinks differently. Hamlet thinks the sins of the mother should be visited upon the child. To Horatio this sounds both theologically and terminally inept. But Hamlet only looks at him, his pupils welling dark with need, and Horatio knows that he cannot, will not 'scape that whipping.  
  
He horses Hamlet over the praying chair in his room and cracks a dozen slaps of his hand over the tights-clad, tightening buttocks until his hand is chafing in sympathy. Hamlet's breath spills out at the first whack and turns coarse at the last, Horatio's signal to up the warmth.  
  
He kneels briefly to press a kiss over the taut black silk before he peels it off and down the hot, sensitive rise of Hamlet's arse, each cheek a-glow with the pink of punishment. Then he stands up again.  
  
"You, my lord, are a rogue. A peasant slave."  
  
Hamlet nods with frantic abandon. Then ruins the scene by ordering "Again!"  
  
"Time, season." Horatio taps the switch to his own burning palm, testing the sting of supple wood to cushiony flesh. Plenty of birch trees in the Wittenberg vicinity.  
  
He starts Hamlet slow and safe, hoping against the odds that his prince will think better of vicarious justice. When Hamlet remains obstinate, Horatio plays the switch not harsher but quicker, a mild staccato of strokes. The birch whistles its way softly down, and Hamlet makes deep-throated little grunts in answer. It's exhilarating. Not one brew from the King's cellar that could swirl Horatio's head as Hamlet's voice does, ever.  
  
"I'll have you count your groans," comes his hoarse threat. Hamlet only moans louder.  
  
The latticed pinks netted across those vulnerable cheeks? Beautiful. Horatio lowers his arm, whips a careful coda to the tender upper thighs. Watches as they open and close involuntarily, his heart leaping with each tap, and knows Hamlet's cry before it is uttered. "God's bodkin!"  
  
Horatio throws the switch away and drops next to his prince.  
  
Later, Hamlet's head in his lap, his hand smoothing faith and absolution down one dark temple, he will hear Hamlet’s "We are content". And Horatio will say "We are", because this - Hamlet's soft-edged, sweet mumble - is the opposite of royal.

**J is for Jealousy**

 

[ ](http://imgur.com/bmAY41F)

Horatio is a survivalist.  
  
Has to be, stuck in deepest Saxony with fifty other lads who, in the Great Chain of Being, naturally fall into three sorts: the wouldwits, the bullies and Prince Hamlet. The first two are not hard to manage. Polite, puzzled silence usually shuts the woulds up; word that Horatio's bestie is the Danish oddball with a kingship on the line and a family case history with poisons has got the bullies sorted. All in all, Horatio's second year at Wittenberg is going swimmingly.  
  
That is, until Hamlet drops his tablets during fencing practice and Horatio finds them.  
  
Now, Horatio is not one for snooping. (Waste of time: gossip, royal or common, knows where to find him.) But it stands to reason that, having found the tablets, he should open them to acquaint himself with the scriptor’s identity. And, having spotted Hamlet’s wild and whirling squiggles on the first leaf, should read on to check that this is not a forgery.   
  
The whirligigs look familiar enough. Row after row of verse, back when Hamlet needed some alone time with the anaphora. A book list. Comparative price data for sables. A… diary?  
  
_Nov. 29. Three times hath my foolish pen struck ink, and still my heart chideth my words for their lack of art. Pray God mine tongue is swift enough, but how can it give a taste of my vows and wishes?_  
  
Thy tongue is savoury enough, Horatio thinks, smiling.  
  
_Dec. 1. O woe is me if I can't talk L. into visiting at Christmas!_  
  
Wait, what?  
  
Christmas, the ivory confirms. Aka, end-of-term vac. For which Hamlet has still failed to serve Horatio with an invitation to join him at Elsinore Castle.   
  
_Dec. 3. O let my plea succeed, that I can dazzle L. with my advances!_  
  
A forgery. Has to be. Or – hist! Perhaps Hamlet has foreseen the day when some body would find the wretched tablets and coined a cipher.  _Oratio_  = Lecture = L. QED. What?  
  
_Dec. 5. Woke up from a dream where I thrust & thrust with great animal spirits, our bodies at close quarters, and L. only said, boy, grip it harder – as he did last year. Sweet dream! Would that all mine were made of such stuff!_  
  
Horatio’s nostrils are pumping fire into his veins as he faces the truth. Laertes. Who well and truly spent last year’s Christmas at the Court, whereto his daddy booked him passage with Prince Hamlet. One-berth passage? O God.  
  
_Dec. 8. Have not told Horatio yet. I will put the matter before him in good time, after L. and I have come to an understanding and_  
  
The tablets drop into silence.   
  
Horatio is calm, mark you. And composed. And calmly, composedly prepared to go full-on antique Roman on his schoolfellows, starting with that milksop Laertes. Laertes! Who keeps a picture of his sister under his pillow and  _kisses it every night_! Is’t possible?  
  
"Is what possible?" says Hamlet, come fresh from his latest  _thrust._ He glances at Horatio's hand and swerves into a whoop. "My tables! Well found, good Horatio! I have indeed news for your attentive ear."  
  
Good Horatio does not punch Hamlet with the tablets because he is a scholar and a gentleman and Hamlet is officially bonkers, and ivory is brittle anyway. Hamlet licks his pencil; Horatio prepares to offer _genital herpes_ as a rhyme to _Laertes_.  
  
"A said ay! The great fencer Lamord!" Hamlet’s ecstatic face swoops close as he coralls Horatio’s neck with his arm. "A will take a French leave to the Court, Horatio, and teach us his bag o’tricks between December's goose and January's ale. Ha! I prithee, observe Laertes when I proclaim the news tonight. If Master Longsword doth not a long face make, I will –" Hamlet checks himself. "Tush, man. What thing hath thee so merry?"  
  
"A thing – of nothing," Horatio laughs. Then deflects his own feint with a kiss. "Capital news, my Lord. Now, methinks if we leave on the 23rd…"

 

**K is for Kiss**

 

"What if I corrupt thee? What if mine lips be mildew to thy ear, blasting thy young virtue to a most sickly fire?"  
  
Their first date is not shaping up to Horatio’s expectations. At all.  
  
"Where is my blush?" wails Hamlet. Horatio does not mention that they’re trysting on the school roof under a north-north-west Saxon wind, and if Hamlet doesn't hurry on with his scruples, he will be shaking with more than youthful lust. "O, turn thy ear away, before my cankerous touch –"  
  
"Gladly," says Horatio, and angles his head so that he can rivet the kiss to Hamlet’s lips without any inconvenience of ears. As kisses go, it’s not his worst. Chaste-ish, but palpable enough that Hamlet goes " _oh_ ", also because he’s bumped his head to the parapet.   
  
Then takes his gloved hands to Horatio’s cheeks, still shaking, now marveling too. Encasing the kiss in lambskin and awe.  
  
"Did I visit thy face too roughly?" Hamlet murmurs, and Horatio doesn't speak; only pulls him into his arms, their heads close together; closer; waiting for Hamlet to kiss to the quick flushed vein on Horatio’s throat, as he does now, and be answered.

 

**L is for Late**

Horatio would be lying if he claimed to have returned in time for King Hamlet's burial. Getting his  _exeat_  was a long game, one that involved enough hair-splitting between his guardian, his Rector and whoever keeps an eye on Horatio's karma above to stuff a mattress.

Once out, though, the road was straight. Berlin (famous for its bears), Lübeck (ditto, bibles) and Copenhague, whose fame Horatio cannot afford to stop and ascertain because it's mid-February already and QUEEN TO WED REGENT is front-page news in every gazette.   
  
Horatio halts only to turn his mourning coat inside out. The rosemary sprig he retains, hidden among a few snowdrops. Perhaps it’s the red silk lining, or the white nosegay, but the Swiss guards let him in without more ado. The castle’s hall swallows him with a gaggle of young bloods, all in festive garb, and Horatio's first thought is,  _Cold_. The hall is cold. The fire is out. And the Merlot tastes chilly.  
  
War junkie or not, the late king had not given his houseguests a choice between toefrost and a red nose.  
  
And, 'swounds, would have ordered a roast for the buffet. Not that sub-zero crap. At least doll it up in aspic or something! Horatio juggles with his platter, knife and cold cuts; dodges a beefeater; scans the wedding party vainly for sables. (Three o'clock? No, that's a gravedigger. Possibly.) Retraces his steps to the door, quickly does it, and nearly trips the bride. Yells an apology over the nonstop cannonade (somebody tell the Lord Polonius to wrap up the toasts!).

It's an awkward moment. Either Queen Gertrude – white-clad, as befits the atmospheric chill – does not remember him, or they both remember Horatio’s last visit, when he pushed the wrong closet door open (Hamlet  _cannot_  be trusted to tell north-north-west from south when drawing a map). As a result, there are two men  -and only two here - aware that Queen Gertrude favours red garters, one of whom is currently glaring at Horatio through his empty tankard.  
  
Luckily, that's when they bring in the cold veal and Horatio can slip out, up, and across the gallery.  
  
He stays clear of the Prince's antechamber. There's a reason, that Horatio will not probe yet, why King Hamlet had a tiny staircase carved in the wall of his son's bedroom, and there's none why Horatio should not make the best of it. The room is empty: in that moment (brief, but agonizing) Horatio wonders if his letters came late, or not at all, and if Hamlet himself is on the road to Saxony.

Then he trusts himself and his prince to angels (who else?), draws a high-backed chair near the bed, and proceeds to wait.  
  
... When he wakes up, he is lying on the bed, still dressed, with Hamlet leaning over him. The moonlight sharpens and gentles Hamlet's features in turn as he whispers "Is't thou" and "Welcome", and - at which Horatio sits up, because Hamlet is wringing his heart - "Receive thy late prince".  
  
Later, after Horatio has tended to the white face with his lips and warm breath, and Hamlet has been persuaded under the bedclothes, the night ushers in the first confidence.  
  
"I will ask the King’s leave to repair to Wittenberg with thee. But, Horatio... I fear..."  
  
Horatio gropes in the dark; finds a still-green sprig and closes Hamlet's fingers on the invisible rosemary. Bergs are hills, as the word goes; but the heart has its mountains, too, and will climb some of them in a beat. "Then," says he, 'will I stay."  
  
And the rest is silence, until the too-late hours turn into soft early dawn, and yesterday can be over at last.


	3. Chapter 3

**M is for Makeup**  

That school play is headed to Disasterberg.  
  
It was Horatio's idea in the first place, a means to turn Hamlet away from his current hobby-horses. Which can be numbered as: 1) ordering sables, 2) writing long and irate letters to his lady mother, 3) brooding upon their likely destination, the Rector's fire grate, and 4) ordering more sables. While Hamlet lolling naked in black furs is a sight for sore eyes, co-lolling, in Horatio's case, tends to produce a rash. Or a sneeze. If not both.   
  
Hence Operation Ancient Roman Wardrobe. Keep the naked, ditch the dead rodents. Talk the Prefect into togas - quite cheap, togas, and easily procured in a school equipped with a state-of-the-art linen closet. Upon the Prefect objecting that the only s.o.t. a. closet here is his own, go for plan B and put Hamlet in a tragedian's slashed doublet – with plenty of slashing and a minimum count of grommets. Lastly, impress upon him the merit of private rehearsals.  
  
All was well that started well. Of course, the cast was bound to dwindle in the following weeks’ rehearsals, due to Hamlet being anally meticulous with DICTION and BODY LANGUAGE, and springing surprise tongue-trippers on them all. No matter: Horatio soothed, reasoned, and agreed to multitask as a stand-in.   
  
And then, the Prefect entrusted Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with props and make-up, and everything went pear-shaped.  
  
"A straw upon your arsenic!" Curtain rise in ten, and Hamlet is being a drama queen. "Out, and take thy foul paint with thee."  
  
" ‘Tis only ceruse!" Ros flashes Horatio a panicked glance. Guil is cowering by the door. "And whites of eggs. I had Cook select the best, roundest, honestest eggs..."  
  
"Lay it an inch thicker, prithee," Hamlet sneers. "I can smell poison at six paces, boy!"  
  
" ’Faith, ceruse it is." Horatio brushes his fingers to the side of Hamlet's dramatically bared neck. "I myself made the ointment. Whites of eggs - capital for the gloss."  
  
A pause.  
  
"Gloss," Hamlet ponders.  
  
"Gloss," Horatio entices. "Shall I...?"  
  
A rhetorical question, as Ros and Guil have already scarpered, and Hamlet is in the process of ungrommeting more throat. As an actor-slash-director, he is nothing if not thorough.  
  
The next minutes are spent at exquisitely close quarters. His prince's breath fondles Horatio's cheek as he take his fingers, dipped into ceruse, to these pale sharp planes. Featherlight strokes; a mere surfacing of white upon white, soft as his kiss to Hamlet’s eyes before he acquaints them with kohl.   
  
" _Not_  belladonna," he says. Then absents himself from Hamlet's lap a while, going to fetch the mirror and tip it so it can trap all the candlelight and Hamlet's face in it. "Here, my lord. A sun is born."  
  
"Oh," Hamlet says, half marveling, half doubting - trust Hamlet to never doubt aught but his own radiance. "Dost think I shall..."  
  
"A hit," Horatio says decisively. "A palpable hit. Now go and make it."

**N is for Nipples**

 

December is the kindest month to a Wittenberg student: short days, late nights blooming into clear splashes of dawn across one's bedfellow, be they a smuggled, round-cheeked lass or another flat-chested lad.   
  
One currently talking his liege down from massive bloodshed.  
  
"My heart? Ay. My wits, at your service. But you are not opening our wrist veins for love or ducats, my lord."  
  
Still, Hamlet has his heart set on rites and pledges. 'Tis the Rector's fault, Horatio thinks darkly. What business had the man to proclaim Queen Gertrude's insta-new nuptials across the refectory? Now Hamlet is depressed  _and_  competitive. Horatio plays truant; snuggles up, spreads his palm across the quick-pulsed heart.  
  
"I want your blood there, warm and busy. But if you crave a pledge..."  
  
"Like the hawk the gloved hand that rooteth it."  
  
…Ah, yes. Poetry. Hamlet's sanctuary at this time, with this bed. In this bed, too. Horatio has pox’d certain tablets repeatedly, mostly when Hamlet will freeze and snatch them from his breast to note his observations mid- _flagrante_. Speaking of... "Breast grabbing."  
  
"I...what?"  
  
"Old, old ritual," Horatio says airily, never one to listen when their Ancient History tutor begins his croak about Mesopotamia and so forth. He lets his thumb and finger close in upon Hamlet's nipple, questing for it across the linen gown, the soft-fleshed aureola. "Hark you, the Turks still do’t."  
  
The Turks kindle a frown from Hamlet. "Do what?"  
  
From the corner of his eye, Horatio checks that the tablets are lying on the floor, half concealed by the bed hangings. "Suckle each other as a troth of undying brotherhood." He bends his head correspondingly, weds his mouth to the erectile tip. (The linen, soaked through, will add its bit of chafing.) Horatio worries it between his teeth; waits for Hamlet's brilliant gasp to pull back.  
  
"The other," Hamlet whines. Limp above, tumbled across the bed, black hair stranded over his eyes. And below? Hard, up and on the verge of spilling. "Take the other!"  
  
"Canst spend from my mouth on you? Canst seal the pact on my thigh, my prince?"  
  
Hamlet bucks, begs him down until Horatio's lips are brushing the virgin spot. Hamlet's left nipple is slower, lazier than his kin, but Horatio ministers to it with small licks and long swathes of tongue until the time is ripe and his right hand can slither up and pinch  _hard_.  
  
"...The Turks?" Hamlet asks again, his last convulsion spent.  
  
"The Abkhazians," Horatio ventures. But the tablets have deserted Hamlet's mind - as has, hopefully, the black bile. "The Christians too. Some prophet or other, methinks, ‘cutting a covenant with Death’ and ‘pressing Sheol's breast’."  
  
Somehow, this is enough to sate Hamlet's anxiety. There lacks an hour to daybreak and Horatio slipping back into his own pallet; they ought to sleep, Horatio thinks, watching his lover’s eyes flutter shut. But Hamlet, as fates would have it, grabs - the last word.  
  
"Let the candied tongue lick..."  
  
"Tonight," says Horatio, his wits already ahead of his rest. The college pantry has jams and confits a-plenty, and the servant will leave the key there for a gulden. "But for now, sweet Prince, good night."

 

**O is for Occult**

[ ](http://imgur.com/p6H8Yss)

 

King Hamlet died a year ago, in May, on a green and gardening day.

Horatio has been turning the matter over in his head since April. Remembrance, he feels, is in order. But the only rosemary to make its entrance will be with the Sunday joint, and he doubts the Rector will mention H. R. H. our dear departed at Chapel, not with King Claudius’s donation loud and clinking in his coffers. Which leaves Hamlet himself as emcee.

Horatio, not quite sure what befits a mourning anniversary for two, prepares himself carefully. Rubs his nose with mint against sables. Wears his blacks with a difference. Slips a vial of plum spirits into his breech pockets. And waits for Hamlet to decoy him after evensong, only to lose his emcee in the usual stampede for the Chapel door and miss him once the stampede clears up.

It is eleven when he collides with the Prefect of Studies on his third round of the haunts. The Prefect gives him a demerit, a disappointed look, and then, on subtle second thoughts, his thumb over his shoulder. "Left, first," his mouth corner says.

The first room on the left, in the corridor now hastily re-entered by Horatio, belongs to the Faustus kid. And Horatio finds the old wooden partition porous enough that he can eavesdrop on the dialogue behind it. What the wood mutes, his fancy hurries to procure. 

The dialogue goes something like this.

Hamlet : O, but think you he will be pacified?

Faustus : Eh, homie. _(Faustus, too, is a scholarship boy.)_ Your ghost, your gamble. I mean, I can deliver the goods, sure, but no guarantee if they’ll play nice or play mean. Que sera sera. 

Hamlet : My fears are for my father’s rest, not mine own. ‘Tis most dreadfully plagued as Mayday nears, and yet will I not holler a _m’aidez_ until I know that my dear father be among the saved.

Faustus : Bad dreams, eh? Tell you what. Make it a hundred quids, and I’ll hook you on nepenthes. The real deal, like, not your stinko poppy-dopey bromide. Just what the doctor ordered. _(A pause.)_ Okay, so we’re talking big. One hundred thalers, and you get a bona fide interview with the Black One.

Hamlet : The… the devil?

Faustus _(swoll’n with cunning)_ : I’ve had other offers, hark you. Fortinbras minor – 

Hamlet : A is called the father of lies. A might lie about my father, and still damn me gratis.

Faustus : Look, sweet-eyes, make your choice. I’m a very busy necromancer and I haven’t got all night. You wanna stick to ghost, you shoot me the cash. Hell, I’ll even throw in Helen of Troy as a freeb… _Horatio?_

"A piece of him," Horatio says, and lets his fist call the goods. He pulls the punch, because (a) kid, and (b) Horatio has a healthy respect for the college scouts and blood is a bitch to clean up. Meanwhile, Hamlet looks as if Horatio was freshly risen from Below, which makes it easier to tug him up and out the door before Faustus’s yell has conjured the living.

"No ghosts," Hamlet will say later, a wet-eyed penitent. Horatio will nod and pour him a strong glug of plum. 

"No ghosts. That way lies miching malecho. But I’m for a song or an elegy, if you are, and then a good night’s sleep. Lover’s orders. Now blow, and I will tell you about that time in Norway, when I stood among the crowd and clapped…"

 

**P is for Prank**

 

There are, sadly, no official records for the great prank war of 1592. The following account has therefore been parsed from word-of-mouth bits and bobs as penned by the main protagonists during Homewriting Hour. Exhaustivity is not guaranteed. Nor is spelling. Impartiality is right out. 

All sources, however, concur in locating the first skirmish in the Sixth Form’s southern study, _post_ its invasion by the Six Form’s northerners, _post_ the northern study being cordoned off due to a smoking chimney. The southerners did not take kindly to the takeover: viz. Fortinbras minor’s sally to Prince Hamlet that like father, like poxy son. Hamlet’s hot-blooded "Get thee to a nursery" did not mend matters. Still, a ceasefire might have been reached if somebody (as of yet anon) had not piped "Villain, I have done thy sister!" into the melee. Whereupon young Laertes went puce-faced and bellowed for revenge upon the whole northern faction.

By the next morning, Little Wittenberg, as Luther once called it fondly, woke up a big bad battlefield.

The South Side lost no time. By six, they had somehow managed to leave a rude drawing ( _not_ of an asparagus) and its rude caption in the snow-covered north yard. It was first spotted by the college chaplain, when he took three other clerical worthies to watch the sun rise from the Astronomy Tower. 

("First anatomy skills they e'er showed, by cock!," the Art Master was heard later confiding to his peers.) 

But the Southerners’ hubris was their downfall. They should have left one guard on watch – for, upon returning to their quarters, they were set upon by MM. Hamlet, Horatio & Co with ice water buckets. Those who beat it in time to their staircase found it lavishly coated with goose’s grease.

("La, where found they goose’s grease?" was Cook’s comment. "I use hog’s.")

Bruised and bumped, but unyielding, the Lord Laertes cranked up the fight by releasing a swan into the northerners’ breakfast corner. Much ado ensued before the swan was returned to its native pond, confused but unharmed.

(" _You_ tell the Elector," the Rector told his Prefect.)

Meanwhile, the Lord Laertes’ nature walk had enabled the Lord Hamlet to break and enter his room. Not only that: Laertes, upon handing his class project in Rhetoric, did not realise at first that his oration on devout purity now ended on a satirical poem, entitled "Mine summer vac in the Parisian, ah, nunneries". 

(Two abandoned letter drafts, warning King Claudius of Hamlet’s upstanding skills in forgery, can still be viewed in the college museum.) 

The Faustus kid now took the next swing. Literally: by throwing a tennis ball soaked in Riesling wine and lit on fire across the classroom. It took six college men to put the fire out, and by that time the Wittenberg staff were taking up arms themselves.

(How the kid could _flambé_ a ball ninety years before the discovery of phosphorus is still a matter of scientific debate.) 

No sooner was the ball in cinders that the Rector burst into the room, roaring "Out, out! A plague o’ both your studies!" This suitable show of authority did, it seems, bring the feud to a stop. By supper, Hamlet and Laertes were shaking hands. By the next sunrise, the two sides had pactised enough to hoist a sulphur bomb under the Rector’s chair, and flee as a body when busted.

("If thou canst flog’em," the humanist Prefect concluded, "have’em join up" – and clinked glasses with his superior.)

 

**Q is for Quarrel**

 

There has always been an English student at Wittenberg, and he’s always been a William. Will Tyndale (Class of 1525) was Luther’s fave, a Hebrew boffin destined to churn out the first English version of the Bible against Rome’s Latin-only veto. His sidekick was Willie Roye, a younger Wittenberg Old Boy. And this year’s Will looks all primed to step into their shoes and take up the quill.

With one proviso. Will is not interested Scriptures of any kind or lingo. He’s for a tragedy.

And is correspondingly stalking Hamlet, on the off-chance that the school’s Stoic Woobie will supply him with a plot. 

Horatio holds his ire in check until it becomes clear that Will is not only a Hamlet fan, but a H2 fan. He keeps a manic eye on their idyl. Hides behind every arras to spy on their sweet nothings. When forced to rat out, he shifts tactics and asks them over for a sup of malmsey. Hamlet, a teetotaler only in Denmark, gives in. 

"Where there’s a Will, there’s a way," he tells a much-protesting Horatio. "Why, man, a might as well speak his whimsy and be done."

The wine does a nice job of thawing Horatio, to the point where he agrees cautiously when Will asks them to beta for him. He needs lovers, he says. And he needs a plausible quarrel between them. Which is why he has glued himself to the Hs, hoping against hope to surprise them in a little domestic. In vain: Hamlet’s shtick is to over-apologize the moment he thinks Horatio is miffed, only for Horatio to reply that there’s no offence, really, by his troth, not one whit, nay, not one shadow of a hair of a doubt, _nay_ , my lord.

"Well, then." A persistent Will snaps his fingers. "A tragedy of errors! Say Your Lordship gave Horatio here a keepsake. Say, a fur-lined –"

Horatio sneezes.

"A handkerchief," Will edits obligingly. "And thereafter espied the handkerchief in Guildenstern’s hands. Or Rosencrantz’s. What then, say?"

"Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are _dead_. Nobody picks a gift of mine!"

"Nay," Will sighs. ‘Think bigger. Think course of true love. Surely, you would choke Horatio first?"

"Nay," Horatio says. "My lord is a most fair vigilante. He would check out my alibi first."

Hamlet lights up, even as Will frowns. "Doubt it not, dear heart. Only the best crime scene reconstitution for you. With hautboys!" 

"But – "

"And _then_ " – Horatio again, triumphantly – "would I say: My lord, I remember. 'Twas on Black Tuesday I lent the handkerchief to that snot-nosed, sniveling Guildenstern, and he, the wretch, had the laundry wench trim a match afore he gave it back. Look! These hands are not more alike." 

"Ha! A did not ’scape detecting." Hamlet turns to beam at the scriptwriter. "Can I choke Guil now?"

"Body o’me, ye two would have me be a mongrel author." Will pauses, but Horatio’s eyes are laughing and Hamlet’s face proclaims _hashtag Horatio lives_. "Ah, well. Tragical-comical-historical it is. Generic unity – vastly overrated, gentlemen, if ye ask me."

 

**R is for Ruff**

 

[ ](http://imgur.com/ziD5ccN)

 

The ruff is a simple job. Clean and starched, but one-layered, fringed only by a wisp of lace. Up to this night, it belonged to Horatio’s neck along with five others of its kind, lovingly packed by his guardian’s wife as part of the schoolboy’s  _trousseau_.  
  
Hamlet took a direct shine to it.  
  
"Wou’d do anything," he says now, stretched out on Horatio’s pallet with the ruff on and not much else. Horatio put it on himself; marked out Hamlet’s tender neckline with his mouth before he wrapped it in the fabric and tied the drawstring just pat. Hamlet’s face looks naked, too, above the white linen folds. "For the wearing of this your favour."  
  
"Wou’t thou, now?"  
  
Hamlet nods, every inch passion’s slave. "Wou’d eat a crocodile."  
  
Their latest scene involved a collared Hamlet being fed strawberries from Horatio’s hand. Trust the former to up the ante. Horatio checks his smile; keeps his strokes light-handed.   
  
"... I will pass on Leviathan."  
  
"Wou’d drink up vinegar." Dark eyes meet his, all molten candour. "Be your whipping-boy."  
  
"My Lord isn't half the Machiavelli he thinks he is."  
  
But Hamlet has a point – there is an untold bond between the ruff’s vulnerability - a thing to be owned, worn and discarded - and Hamlet’s signature wish to be a _thine_. Horatio presses his hand below the lace points, covers one exposed nipple with his thumb. "Mine," he says, rubbing it in. Once answered with Hamlet’s breath, rough-spoken and eager, he lowers his mouth to the breath. The ruff crinkles under his summoned weight, and Horatio lifts himself only so he can tug on the drawstring, forcing Hamlet’s head up to hold that lost gaze. "As thou woul’t be."  
  
Hamlet looks as if caught between a wish and a hard place. "I – I –"  
  
Horatio tugs on the ruff again.   
  
Strong, commanding – " _To this favour must thou come_." He has more words to speak in Hamlet’s ear, shall make him hotly breathe, and fast; but before he can muster them up, Hamlet bucks fiercely against his thigh: hard, accented beats, drumming Hamlet’s ecstasy up, e’en to the once-spotless collar.  
  
The air between them is panting when Horatio manages to prop himself on his elbow and untie the knot. The ruff slips loose, leaving Hamlet’s neck once again orphaned.   
  
"Five to go," Horatio reminds him gently.  
  
Hamlet’s brow is a dumbshow of thoughts as he twists the spent linen between his fingers. Finally, it clears up.

"Wou’t draw me like one of Laertes' French wenches?"  
  
"Ay, my lord," says Horatio, and makes a mental note of picklocking the Art Master’s supply closet. As slaves go, passion has scored double: there is just no saying nay to Hamlet.

 

**S is for Soulmates**

 

"Dost believe in true matches, Horatio?"  
  
The candle quivers. Horatio lassos in his first, carefree words; moves his eyes to the warm shadow of Hamlet's hair on their shared pillow.  
  
"Is't the friend or the scholar asking?"  
  
"My father gave her a Damask rose, once." And there'll be no asking who  _she_  is. "But it had a thorn in its stem, unseen when he whittled it, and she laid her hand on it. My father started, and - by'r Lady! the blood had pearled on his finger."  
  
"This is wondrous strange."  
  
"O, your halfpenny miracle. 'You are myself more than I am,' quoth she, smiling."  
  
On the rooftops, the rain plays a triangular rhyme. Horatio has never asked why Hamlet is his constant guest; why he is pleased with Horatio's close-walled garret, the bursar's lot, and hardly ever asks to be attended in his bed, which Horatio suspects is wide as a fjord and equally cold.  
  
"Come, friend, to sleep. I'll pinch the wick and snuff my old men's tale in one."  
  
It may be that Hamlet is too nervous, or that the flame has a will to live. It nips at Hamlet of a sudden; Hamlet's hand bare and vulnerable at night.  
  
" _Ahi!_ " says Horatio, softly, and is rewarded when Hamlet takes  _his_  fingers to his tongue.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My lords and ladies: the final chapter. All my thanks for your kindly cheers!

**T is for Tease**

Rhetoric is Horatio’s least favorite subject. A lad of few words, Horatio has trained himself to parry fools, old and young, and busybodies (a-plenty in his orphan days) with silence or a good punchline. Listening is his forte, arguing his last resort. Sadly, Wittenberg will have none of his strong silent routine. Wittenberg expects its young gentleman to leap through all five hoops of _inventio, dispositio, elucutio, memoria_ and _actio_ , and won’t take a rain check. And thus Horatio is to orate next morning on – he checks his notes with an oath – _Beasts in the Bible: Pets, Pests or Prophets?_  (The Rhetoric Master has a thing for alliteration.)

Deep breath. "As we, er, see in the story of Balaam’s ass, that, ah –"

"Ass-assinating diction? Good now, thou fittest form to content!"

"…My prince, this is unworthy of you."

" _Mea culpa_. _"_ A not-one-whit penitent Hamlet grins from his seat. "Prithee, carry on."

Deep breath, _repetita_. "- that was of the female persuasion, as the author of Numbers, or authoress, or mayhaps Jeremiah - "

"A woe-man if there was ever one."

"My lord!"

"Did I offend thee? _Mille pardons_." Hamlet, the polyglot tease, smiles wider. "As thou wert saying…" 

"…a female ass, that spoke fundamental - " Hum. Better edit that, if Hamlet’s grin is any touchstone. "– that spoke most wise advice, and had Balaam, er, stop beating the donkey - " O great, Hamlet is snickering. "Stop persecuting the ass, and ride it no further – _my lord!_ "

"Perdy, a most brave oration!" Hamlet is hiccuping between his hoots, and Horatio, never one to thwart Hamlet’s glee, can feel his own perk up.

"O, that I were writ’ down an ass on your leaf!" 

He can’t help it: Horatio’s laugh bursts out, as loud and unprincely as Hamlet’s bray.

"What can I say? Our Master did command me to produce a _lecher_." 

"Better, and worse." They’re both on the bed now, laughing themselves silly, Horatio’s notes crumpled between them. Hamlet’s hand roves under Horatio’s shirt, warmly bold. "I say that we take your lecher straight to _actio_. For this as for the other four – do let me lend a hand."

And that’s the lecture taken care of. Hamlet kings it in Rhetoric, and will devote any time between midnight and matins to pace Horatio through his task. Now for Horatio to return the favour.

"Ay, and your tongue." Now is the shirt loosened and Hamlet's shoulder freed, a blank slate for hand or mouth. Now is Horatio the tease-in-chief. He pauses long enough for Hamlet to look up.

"And let no angel stay either! For if you unhand me, gentle sir, then shall I ass-ault you."

**U is for Undressing**

 

It takes forever and a night to talk Hamlet into this.   
  
" 'Tis servile," he says, his nostrils flaring up at the word – and the correlated sight of Horatio kneeling (quite comfortably) on the polar bear rug, Queen Gertrude's honeymoon souvenir. "I like not to see you at my feet."  
  
Horatio merely runs his hands up the lithe strong line of Hamle’s calf, so he can ungarter it – pushing his fingers into the tight space between silk and flesh – and roll the stocking down. Down, down and off, with a brush of his lips to the naked foot.  
  
"Thou didst say not to  _stand_  upon ceremony."   
  
Hamlet's dark head lols against the high back of his chair as he sighs under the long touch. Here, Horatio thinks. Here be his love: his doublet all unbraced, his collar loose - a dissipated angel, his face blurred to a haze of sensual ease. All matter and no art.  
  
Hamlet's eyes open again.  
  
"More matter" - slyly, one knee tipped out to reveal more of him, indeed, growing under the mussed breeches. Horatio's pulse trips Horatio’s breath. "And, by my fay, all heart."

 

**V is for Vampire**

 

" 'Tis now the very witching hour of time..."   
  
The author-slash-director-slash-self-appointed-lead of  _Martin Luther, Witch Hunter_  nods approval. Marcellus pauses, emphatically; points left, to where Fortinbras Minor stands holding a HERE BE A CHARNEL HOUSE placard. (The Prefect, while turning a somewhat blasé eye on bloodstained shrouds and clanking chains, has set a hard limit on decors. One does not want the Elector to trip on a few  _disjecta membra_  when climbing onto the proscenium to congratulate the cast.)  
  
"When church mice yawn and Hell itself -"  
  
"Yards! Churchyards! How now, a rat?"  
  
"...and Hell itself - erm - Hell..." One look at Hamlet's fire-and-thunder brow, and Marcellus grinds his gears into high speed. Horatio, spotting his clue, takes a step forward.  
  
"...breathescontagiontothisworld. Now could I suck on hot blood..."  
  
Hamlet's hand shoots up. "Hark! Editing time."  
  
This is as close to "take five" as Hamlet is capable of, and the entire cast deflates in relief. Horatio steps back.  
  
"A will not suck on you," Hamlet hisses. " 'Tis _unseemly_."  
  
"A is a vampire. 'Tis in character for one such as he to suck."  
  
"A could be an abstemious vampire."  
  
"Rather defeats the point," Horatio counters, waving the parchment script in his hand. Where Hamlet's wild scribble reads "KILLETH ONE PASSING BY AND DRINKETH HIS BLOOD IN A MOST HORRENDOUS MANNER. ENTER LUTHER, HOLDING UP A CRUCIFIX."  
  
The scowl darkens. "A will not touch thy throat with his bloody lips! A may have a  _sip_  off thy wrist. One sip, prithee."  
  
Horatio peeps around, drops a conciliatory kiss. "Or let him use a cup, my lord."  
  
"Ay!" The scowl brightens. Hamlet gropes for his quill. "Now could I drink... a hot posset of blood. Ay. In a cup. Which I, by happenstance, have in mine pocket. And do such bitter business as the bitter day would bitterly quake to look on..."  
  
To Horatio's ear, that's one word too many. But the play's not the thing: the thing is Hamlet, bright-eyed, romping about in his Gothic monster hunting yarn. Hamlet happy – a sight to disarm even Luther and his crucifix, and sweeten any day in the year.

 

**W is for Wedding**

"...then chose he to wed Katie von Bora, telling his friends" - the Theology Master pauses for maximum impact - "  _'Twill tickle my father, rile the Pope, crack up the angels and give the devils something to cry for_. God grant you such hopes, gentlemen, on your nuptials. Now, the sacramental value of..." 

But Hamlet no longer listens. The earth continues its snail trail round the sun, the Master seesaws his gentle voice, and inside Hamelt, something shifts, too; something turns, tide-like, suffering a sea change.

Up to now, Hamlet's views on marriage have followed his double-or-quits moral imperative. Ideal husbands (see: Father) or get out. Ideal  _wives._ Merry widows: pah! Merry incest-what-incest widows: yea, no. His recent family circumstances have led Hamlet to the sad but true conclusion that marriage is no longer what it was. O for long ago, when you could join hands with your true love anywhere, be it the fjord next door, and promise your heart and life away! And keep word! But then, the Vikings invented divorce. And kings died strong and fair. And Mother took one look at Uncle C. and said, oh well, that buffet has some nice leftovers. O God. Quits it was. No more marriages. All gone to the dogs - well, seals. Rotten to the core, all of them, in this brave new time.

But...

Will catches his stolen look - a nip of eyes, really - at Horatio's gold-shadowed hair and winks. Reads him like a Quarto, as he leans across his desk and whispers, "All but one, eh?"

Hamlet frowns, but Horatio turns his head at the noise, pat when the Theology Master is saying "...marvellous happily", and - just like that - quits turns coat. 

He waits until the class has herded itself out, Horatio a marvellous puzzled loiterer, to join hands. "I will take thee to wed," Hamlet says in a rush, because the refectory doors close at one, sharp, and it's strudel day. O but wait. Brave new time. Consent. "If thou willt. Have me. Would thou wou't - but thy will be done, and all shall be well. Ay, Will?" 

"Ay me," Will can be heard muttering, but Horatio is already saying, "My lord, with all my will."

They have no rings (Wittenberg, while a liberal school in many respects, has a no-bling-bling dress code) and Horatio declines to wear the Hamlet Family Medallion because (a) secret betrothal, and (b) the portrait inside is the wrong Hamlet. Hamlet, however, roots for tradition. So they all end up back at their desks, Horatio's left hand still clasped in Hamlet. Who kisses his fourth finger devotedly and then straightaway dips it into a three-quarter full inkhorn. Will makes _only in Denmark_ noises, but Hamlet can hear the angels chuckle.

That he has to cut up his fiancé’s meat and vegs for him (secret betrothal!) at lunch is a bonus. 

Will, who is all but taking notes as they go, insists that a by-the-book secret wedding needs holy ground and a holy hour. Also a secret wedding breakfast. With beer. No glug, no glory. A secret monk would be a plus, but Will agrees to be practical here and cross out the padre if Hamlet sponsors the beer. Midnight is consensually decreed the safest hour to break into Chapel, and the secret wedding party tip-toes back into class.

The day’s cogs and wheels tick by, although it is past 2 a.m. when the party meets again in Chapel. As fate would have it, the Faustus kid spotted Horatio’s black knuckles during Maths and cried plague. Class exploded; the college apothecary, once summoned, talked of distributing dead toads (to be worn around the neck) and cooked onions (for disinfection) among the entire Sixth Form. The Sixth Form objected that they’d rather smoke pipes. The Faustus kid made a sale offering for his cure-all pill (quantity discount above five per order). By the time the Prefect stepped in and un-quarantined Horatio, bedtime was so yesterday. 

"I take thee to wed," Hamlet says all the same, relishing the quiet chiaroscuro. Sans the boys, and sans their weekly bleat of Sorrow Makes My Gloomy Heart Her Lair, the chapel _does_ look holy. He shuffles a foot. "And, er, will buy thee a true ring on my next allowance."

Horatio’s smile matches his shadowed gold. "I take thee to wed. But thy heart is looped around mine, anywhere I go; and so, dear heart, content." 

The devils have to lend a few tears here, e’en to Will. Fortunately, there _is_ beer back at Horatio’s – as well as a gate of honour, Danish-style, nailed around his door. Greenly fresh, with the racy scent of pine branches gathered in the nearby wood by Ros and Guil during their extra plague recess. (Hamlet’s order for prophylaxis. He very generously let them keep the cones.)

They eat and drink and are merry. The grooms share a fruit for tradition’s sake, although the odds for fertility are pretty skewed in their case. Eventually the clock strikes three; Will, passing the port, stays his hand; slaps his brow; exclaims, "Your marriage lines! God-a-mercy, we've forgotten them!" 

"Will, no priest ever would –" 

"Nay." His finger to Horatio’s lips, Hamlet searches his breast. Takes his tablets out. "They did ever lie here, husband."

For the first ivory leaf bears their common monogram, H, beautifully embossed among the low-relief arabesques. A familiar sight. An often sight, whenever Hamlet rips off his doublet before a bout of fencing or… ay, and Horatio has to rescue the tablets. But now, a new man, a married man, Horatio casts a new eye on it. And Hamlet knows what he sees. 

Two vertical lines, pillars of reciprocity, joined together by a third. Hamlet thinks of ciphers and emblems - of those painters, faraway in the east, known for drawing the same scene again and again, until it has been chiseled out to its very essence. Flesh out these lines in reverse, and they will show you two young men, each holding the other upright, their arms clasped and entwined and fusing them into a strong unit.

Hamlet pulls the tie loose, lets the leaf slip into Horatio’s hand.

"And here shall they lie, an ever-fixed mark."

**X is for Xeno**

 

Peak July, the laziest month, mixes memory with desire when it comes to _al fresco_ naps. Horatio used to get his off the land, lying in this corn field, under that tree or the other, one arm flung across his face. The bower in the Rector's garden is a second best, on a tight rota among his school fellows now that the Rector is summering in Geneva. But when his, it is lovely. Lulls him with static warmth and free-flowing light, piercing the leafy darkness... droning with... the hum of... green thoughts...  
  
"Buzz, buzz," Hamlet says enticingly. "Buzz,  _buzz_."  
  
Horatio's eyelashes part just enough to take in Hamlet's splendor. His dark shimmering eyes. His waist, always slim, now complimented by his abdomen: what slashed doublet could rival this gleam, this blazon layered out in bold stripes of black and gold? Hamlet's muscled arms beckon - all six of them – as he hovers up and down over Horatio's still-slumped form, his sting a madrigal of lust.  _Suck, o, suck the honey off my music vows..._  
  
The next vow strikes a whole note. Big - booming - the real deal, sending the dream awol. Horatio starts; blinks at Hamlet, drowsy and deep-breathing in his arms. The note halts, confused. To bee, or…?   
  
"To sleep," Horatio soothes him, and dips his own softened mouth to the vows. 

 

**Y is for Yorick**

 

[ ](http://imgur.com/UUwdehm)

Horatio is all for acculturation. Nay, really. But right now, his comparative study of the Saxon _Gasthaus_ and Italian _albergo_ is being spoilt by the former spoiling for a new record in soot, sweat and decibels – courtesy of the students’ main table. Horatio raises his beaker to his nose, resolved to enjoy at least the Saxon beer.

"He was from here, mark you."

Horatio glances over the rim, startled to find Hamlet smiling. Apparently, the 200-db roar of laughter from the main table has proved contagious. Hamlet’s cheeks are ruddy – courtesy of the fire and beer – and dimpled, a far cry from his customary autumnal self, but his eyes are not quite here.

"Jürgen, I think his name truly was. I saw him afore he died, Horatio, when he was a-bed with a red counterpane and a goose to keep him warm. He leaned his cheek on his hand and winked, and said ‘I pray you, Master Princeling’ –" 

Hamlet pauses. "Something too much of this."

But the fire is up, and the brawlers are quieter, making Horatio’s peace with the present. He can afford the past: his love for Hamlet was never possessive, and he has shared his own dear dead on occasion. Memory is drawing a curtain round their nook, giving them their own privacy in the crowded common room.

"Nay, good my lord, go on. What said he?" 

"That I should do two things for love of him. I was a bairn, Horatio, and much afeard of the goose, but I gave a nod and he a grin, for he was past laughing. Then said he, I must go to Wittenberg to whittle my wit and wet my whistle. The goose said ‘ _hoch, hoch_ ’ " – Hamlet’s pitch-perfect honk has a few heads turn - "and I laughed as you now do, Horatio." 

"And kept your word."

"Half my word, I. His other suit was that I learn to juggle five plums." 

Horatio laughs harder. 

"Marry gip, Yorick himself could have spun the sun and moon to a new course. But I – hark, ye mocker! was too faint of grasp. I have tried since. Perhaps he – he loved me, ay, he did, and his eye was keen to the last. Perhaps he saw –"

Before the hitch can swell to a break, Horatio grabs the plate between them. Quetsche plums may not be what the late Jürgen had in mind, and four are gone already, stripped down to their kernel state. But the plate holds three more: regally purple, the bloom to their cheeks visible in candlelight. Hamlet looks down at them. 

"Think you I am _this_ ill at numbers? But yet…"

 _Ay_ , Horatio thinks, half for himself. _Ay, love, for my sake and his – for that most wise, most Wittenberg man and his last teaching_. Hamlet’s hands are a little slow, a little gauche at sharing the plums with gravity. But they warm up to the trick, and soon they're tossing in the right pinch of momentum. Catch, toss, wheel: the fruit rise higher and higher, never flouting their course - a miniature music of the spheres - unless a plum plummets a little too fast, and that’s when Horatio snatches it and returns it to the air.

One day, Hamlet will have to go back. To where the days are dark half of the year, and family no longer a lighthouse on the coast. To the wild Northern sea with its pirates, and the Northern land of ice and snow, of swords and poisons and King Claudius. Horatio watches as Hamlet catches on a threat only to cast it off, quicksilver-quick, confident in his wits and Horatio’s outstretched hand on the ready.

A last teaching, yea, but a sound one.

The last plum lands again on the tabletop and Hamlet takes a bow from the waist, beaming at the guests’ cheers. Horatio beams, too, as he catches the empty hands.

"Come tomorrow, my lord, we’ll try you on four."

**Z is for ’Zooks**

 

It’s all very Rabelais, when Hamlet is on a spree. Figs and straws and plagues. Poxes of every size and variety. By cock, by Gis, by the north pole (must be a Danish thing). Horatio stores the oaths  in his mind’s corner, one devoted to the juicier Hamletiana. A bunch of them are variations on the Lord’s body parts that would have the Kabbalists raise a tush-tush eyebrow. ’Swounds and ’zounds, ’slud (it took Horatio months to nail that one – a dwarfed _God’s blood_ ), God’s bodkins, ’zooks ( _God’s hooks_ , don’t ask him). When Hamlet is in a daring mood, he shortens the Almighty to Od: Od’s heart, Od’s me, Od’s my little life (Horatio’s favourite). 

"Oh, mean you mighty Odin?" Horatio teases. "A family oath?" For it’s fairly obvious where Hamlet’s cursing trend comes from. The old king may have kept a soap-clean mouth before his queen, but Horatio suspects that the nursery got a pass. Ten to one Junior’s first word, babbled into a proud and still tip-top paternal ear, was "Zoo’t!"

And so Hamlet oathes on in pious filial duty. And so Horatio comes to bed prepared as their lovemaking ripens. He leads, and Hamlet’s mouth pieces sighs and gasps together when not otherwise occupied. They touch, gently at first, stopping each other at lovers’ checkpoints for concerned  _?_ and thrilled _!_ , often retracing every caress until it has stamped itself in sensation. Hands are sent in embassy for lips and tongue-tips, each plea longer and more affirmative until Hamlet’s moans thicken; until they grow tumescent, mingling the heavy syllables of Old Danish with their wet exhales. Horatio covers Hamlet’s body, freely and joyfully given over, until Hamlet is growling for more: for Horatio to break that last invisible knot in Hamlet’s all-Gordian machinery of nerves and soul, and Horatio says _ay_.

Now, he thinks. Now will Hamlet out-Hamlet himself in profanity. Has to, as he struggles through the pain-pleasure (Horatio counting to one hundred with moderate haste and immoderate sweat). Their souls rut first, their life breaths, Hamlet’s spilling out loud-pitched as Horatio finally thrusts himself up to the hilt. Hamlet’s mouth _O_ ’s, and Horatio braces himself ( _now_ ): digs deeper, to the rut’s heart of heart, trembling with love and acceleration.

"O, wonderful!" Hamlet cries out – a one-man pang of bliss – and Horatio dies and rises into the bliss.


End file.
